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Conservative baptist preacher here. We tell people to trust and verify, as the Bereans of Acts 17:11 did when even someone as notable as an apostle preached to them and, rather than just listen and believe, they went home and verified that what they were told was true.

Hi, GJP member here. She was in it, at one point. But she was not in it at the end.

I cannot actually find a post from her after the one quoted in that (Feb 2013 (Edit: April 2013, found a more recent one)), looking through my archives. It's entirely possible that she left the group after that, because she did not post at all. There was a lot of commentary on her work, but nothing from her.

So Leigh technically isn't lying. On 18 September 2014, when she wrote that, she was not in the group and had not been for some time.

The fact is, there's sensitive information on there if only private contact information, for PR members and each other (we arranged multiplayer sessions for review games in order to properly review MP parts of games). So obviously we would have to redact SOME things.

And if we're redacting SOME things, there will always be a vocal contingent who swears we're redacting MORE things. ZOMG THEY DIDN'T RELEASE EVERYTHING.

The guy who leaked them said that he gave Milo everything. Take it up with him.

well, we can't disclose every single contact we had with devs, let's not disclose anything at all then

Except disclosure happens. I agree that, for example, Patricia Hernandez should have disclosed her relationships to Anna Anthropy and Christine Love, because she was rooming with them and/or in a romantic relationship. That crosses the line of professionalism. And now they're disclosed.

But not every professional or even friendly-professional relationship needs a disclosure, and this is widely understood by journalists at long-established publications. Recall Jenn Frank, who was told by the Guardian legal team & editors that she didn't need to disclose her friendships with Zoe Quinn / Mattie Bryce when writing her op-ed, even when
she wanted to.

Sometimes a line gets crossed, like with Ms. Hernandez, and then disclosure should happen. That is a far cry from "let's not disclose anything at all."

well, it's impossible to be 100% unbiased in a review, so we shouldn't even think about being unbiased

The problem here is that your 'unbiased' means 'apolitical,' and there is no such thing as an apolitical review or even an apolitical game. (Maybe Bejeweled).

I have friends at Blizzard, for instance. When I review, say, the next StarCraft game, I
should
keep myself unbiased by not worrying about how a poor review might hurt my friends' livelihoods. That's the type of bias that absolutely should be kept out of a review. But if the game treats its female characters poorly, the only racial minorities are stereotypes and there's a gay character who's a total joke caricature, I should call it out in the review.

The most honest thing a reviewer can do is tell you his or her honest experience playing the game. It is fundamentally an opinion - an educated opinion, hopefully, honed over playing thousands of hours of games in a lifetime, but it is an opinion. Abridging said opinion for fear that some members of the audience won't care about it (or worse, that it'll impact a dev's Metacritic and therefore their bonus) is, actually, being dishonest.

well, we can't release the full transcript of these group conversations, so let's not release anything

I just don't see the purpose. What would it serve? You want to see the pro wrestling discussions? The in-jokes? It would be hours and hours of work to fully redact it of any personal information and collect it into readable, digestable versions, for what benefit? It would never sway the minds of those who have already resolved that it was a Secret Cabal of Elitists who controlled all media narratives, because they would always be able to argue (correctly) that not everything was leaked.

Hey! Thanks for showing up on KIA. Would love if more of your friends would do the same. I hope you don't find my reply too harsh, although it would be understandable if you did.

I understand your rational and where it's comming from, but I have to disagree with you. Your opinion seems to be a rather immature one.

And, obviously, nature compels me to write a metricton of text to explain why, because why the heck wouldn't I eh. I imagine you will disagree with about 85% of my points (and I would love if you could offer a rebutal to them, as I approach every discussion on a personal level and I'm always looking for feedback, this is how you root out bad ideas and find better ones) but I urge you to keep going until the end as I believe at least the last point will make you think a little bit even if you don't agree with it completely.

"Disclosure happens", except that it didn't, several times, and some of the people that didn't disclosed their relationships went on record to state that they don't believe this is important. This sends a message that these people do not understand the duties and responsabilities of their profession, and made a situation that could have been solved with a simple "Gee, my bad guys, I'll fix it from now on" much much worse.

As for the situation with Jenn Frank, I gotta say, The Guardian mishandled the situation about as badly as Kotaku did, and like many other new media outlets, it should reform their ethic guidelines and the enforcement of said guidelines. I guess we could press the Guardian for better ethical and quality standards, but you've got to know when your plate is full. Maybe in the future, after GamerGate is done either killing the host or curing it's cancer.

But my point is that what is current BUSINESS practice means jackshit once we get into Ethics territory. Business will, in general, operate on a risk-reward system and will break ethics and moral codes if it means their chances of getting caught are little or the consequences of getting caught are manageable. It is up to the consumers and the professionals involved on the hands-on operations to stand by those ethical codes despite what the business accepts as common practice - remember, managers and hr and legal DON'T CARE what happens to journalism, if the industry gets disrupted for one reason or another they'll still have jobs elsewhere, but the journalists will be all left to fend for themselves.

TL DR Stick to your journo guns, not the business guns, as when the time comes those are the only ones you can use to defend yourself. Do not trust Corporate to look out for you.

"unbiased does not means apolitical", see this is the exact problem we have with journalists, and I am really sorry this is your stance on the issue as after GamerGate is done people who keep this stance won't have much space on the industry, and my suggestion is that you start recycling yourself as soon as possible to avoid being on this situation. Flexibility is the mark of a successfull carreer on any area.

Don't get me wrong, I think that the only way to get a tridimensional image of any artifact is to collect different perspectives and compare what each person see in order to form said image.

People like TotalBiscuit are regarded as being the creme de la creme of game reviewers because they are able to place themselves on many different shoes and give a very good and informative idea to their viewers, so when you go to TotalBiscuit you don't need many other opinions to figure out if you're going to buy the game or not.

We use the term "injection" to refer to ideology in game reviews because this is exactly what it is. Social issues are not the focus of video games, and have never been the focus of 'em. If you think otherwise I suggest you start looking into what the medium really is (an offshot of classical GAMES) and not what some hipster morons think it is (an offshot of movies/books and other storytelling tools). The best and most famous games (poker, football etc) are those who use mechanics to teach you mechanical skills (lying, bluffing, running, reflexes etc). As an exercise, try digging out any examples of games created with the intent to propagate an idea.

You will see some vidya like Metal Gear Solid going out of their way to make social commentary, and in those cases when a game is trying to send you a message I think it's healthy (although not always necessary) to discuss it. By the way the fact that when Metal Gear Solid came out all that Games Magazines used to focus on was the Diazepan and Cigarretes issue tells me that this pattern of using moral scares for attention has been going on for a while in gaming. Find me a magazine that covered the anti-nuclear message of the game in detail when it came out and I'll donate 10 dollars to whichever charity you choose.

I am not against social commentary in gaming, personally, but I think that when you give any bloke a megaphone you'll see that they all feel entitled to turn it up and use it. When they stop using it responsibly is the time you take the tool away and give it to someone else who can do so without misusing it. Always remember who you are and who gave you the privilege to address an audience and why.

So TL DR By all means have social commentary in gaming, just remember to do it resposibly and in an honest, relevant, and careful way. With parsimony. And if you don't have the qualifications to do so, don't do it. Stick to the things you have a deep understanding of.

"What would (releasing the entire mailing list) serve?".

Your statement says a lot more than you're able to see, and like another anon mentioned earlier, it's a recurring trend among your peers.

You don't seem to have the empathy to be able to place yourself on other people's perspectives. That's just it.

What would releasing the entire mailing list serve? It would appease many people. It would be seen as a gesture of good faith, the sort of stuff businesses that have nothing to hide do when they are placed under public scrutinity. It would help humanise the people involved on that list, too. (Maybe it would be damming for a guy like Kuchera, though, but you're all in trouble if you don't start making amends and cutting hands to save the arms soon. Do it before Corporate starts doing it.)

This is the same lack of empathy that doesn't let you overcome your biases or understand how they are seen by the public when they get the best of you on a review. For a group of people so interested in social commentary, in general, it seems to fail to understand how human society works on basic levels.

TL DR If you don't understand why releasing the full GJP's logs are important, in a sense, you're no better than all the anons that go to twitter to troll "anti-gg" people and think they're helping anything other than themselves accomplish anything other than having a giggle.

We don't do "listen and believe". Trust and verify is what we like to do.

Now, about that trust: LA first said she wasn't in the list. She didn't say 'not any more', she said she wasn't in it. Now I don't know about you, but that sounds like a lie, or at the very least an extremely dishonest omission of the truth.

If people say "you're in club X", replying "I'm not!" is a dishonest answer if you have been part of that club.

I'm sure as a GJP member you'll disagree, but how hard would it have been for here to say "I have been on that list for a short while, but I haven't read it, or written for it in a long time, so I have nothing to do with the current events on there"?

The answer is: it would have been very easy. LA was dishonest on purpose because she knows GJP looks very, very bad. Even if you think it isn't, that's how it looks (talking to each other about ousting a journalist for uncovering the truth, talking about buying gifts for a developer, talking about not writing about certain events, it's disgusting tbh).

Now, about that trust: LA first said she wasn't in the list. She didn't say 'not any more', she said she wasn't in it. Now I don't know about you, but that sounds like a lie, or at the very least an extremely dishonest omission of the truth.

How is it a lie?

The guy wrote that he learned there was a secret group dedicated to controlling the narrative, calling out Leigh by name. This was on Sept 17, so it was obviously referencing the Zoe Quinn stuff and the "Gamers are Over" articles, insinuating that both were born out of GJP.

Leigh says that she is not on the list. She is not. She is saying that because her Gamers are Over article and whatever else she's written about ZQ, AS et al, did not come from GJP.

This is not a lie. This is a fact.

If she had said "I have never been in that list," that would have been a lie. A boldfaced one, at that.

But what she said, in any reading of it in the context, was true.

talking to each other about ousting a journalist for uncovering the truth, talking about buying gifts for a developer, talking about not writing about certain events

1.) Alistair Pinsof was not "ousted for uncovering the truth." He was fired for unethical behavior that exposed his employer to serious legal liability, and unprofessional behavior in having a public meltdown over Twitter for all to see.

I'm not saying he should not have reported that the IndieGoGo was fraudulent, but there are absolutely ways to do that
without
outing a trans person. "IndieGogo funds used to cover developer's personal medical expenses." There, that's a headline that correctly explains the fraud without outing her as trans.

What he did, while well-intentioned, was a severe violation of journalistic ethics. The
SPJ code of ethics
that everyone tosses around these days straight up says this:

Balance the public’s need for information against potential harm or discomfort

He did not do that. And considering the developer's already fragile emotional state AND the higher rate of violence against trans individuals, he could have actually been risking serious harm or injury to her. That is unethical.

More to the point, he had a public Twitter meltdown that everyone was watching, while acting as a representative of his employer. There's nothing wrong with expanding on a news story you've written on Twitter, of course, but if you're going to be acting as a representative of your company, you'd better be doing so professionally. If Mike McWhertor wrote a news story for Polygon and then on Twitter started fielding questions while in obvious emotional distress and exposing Polygon to legal liability, you can damn well bet Brian Crecente would be having words with him.

2.) A member suggested getting a gift card or letter of support. The suggestion was received extremely negatively by people who felt it would be overstepping the lines of professionalism, and the idea was dropped.

Literally, this is like exactly why the group was a GOOD thing for journalistic ethics. One wonders "should we do this?" and his colleagues say "no, that's a breach of professional boundaries" and the thing doesn't get done. That's how the system is supposed to work.

3.) Let's look at Kyle Orland's original post here. I quote:

I understand where Quinn is coming from, and want to respect her desire for privacy. At the same time, I do feel that there is some legitimate public interest in a game developer being attacked by "the internet." At the same time as
that, I don't want to in essence reward the jerks doing this by giving their "issue" any attention at all

He was then asking what people thought the ethical thing to do is. Again, refer to the part of the SPJ code I quoted earlier about balancing the public's right to know vs doing harm. Do you report on a game dev being viciously attacked, knowing it will just draw attention to her and potentially make the attacks worse? It was literally a question of what the ethical thing to do was.

I imagine he asked this reminded of Kotaku last year reporting on the harassment of a transgender gamer
which only amplified the harassment. Causing harm is against the SPJ code, and is unethical.

Orland was asking the members of the group what they thought was the best way to report on this story, if they were going to report on it at all. Different sites reported on it (or didn't) in different ways. No directive came down from On High. It was, again, literally a question of journalistic ethics.

and searching for "leigh alexander" brings up a LOT of hits, because we talked a lot about her.

searching for her email, however, brings her last post up in April. So that was the last time at which she was involved in the group. In between then and now, she left. Proof:
http://i.imgur.com/oAxptK2.jpg

You cover it, but you don't mention the ethical problems that discussing it with potential future employers entails, I'd be a bit miffed if my manager asked a competiting manager and someone I could work for on advice whether to fire me. What's your view on that?

I think that's true if and only if there hadn't been anything going on in public simultaneously. But Alistair was at the same time also making himself look bad on Twitter.

It's like... okay, currently, I'm a teacher. Say I teach something with my own personal biases, a parent of my student complains to the principal. The principal talks with other principals about my unethical actions.

Meanwhile, though, at an assembly in my school auditorium, I stand up and begin causing a scene in public about what I've done in public. The principal doesn't HAVE to tell other principals, I'm doing my own work in torpedoing my career.

Or, say I'm an accountant. I discuss my clients' financial issues in public on Twitter. Whatever my boss is currently telling his colleagues over drinks about my work ethic or lack thereof, I'm currently making myself look bad.

I dunno, dude, I just have a really hard time getting to the "people should not be held accountable for the unprofessional or unethical things they do at their current career."

That's the point though, he shouldn't be talking about that stuff over drinks to his competitors, they aren't all colleagues. If it was fellow managers at the same company then fine but not the competitions managers. They have a conflict of interest and this sort of list should not be used to essentially blacklist a guy regardless of how good a job the person is doing

Forgive my lack of knowledge on how this works, but your search only seems to indicate emails that she herself sent yes? Is that proof at all that she actually left the group instead of stopped participating?

But we know she wasn't on the list Milo revealed which was leaked in early September. So at some point she DID leave the group. I'm not sure when, but looking at when she stopped participating seems a good start. She was fairly active before then.

Not long. Someone linked me to this on Twitter, because I had told them earlier that the "Gamers Are Dead" posts weren't formulated on GJP (and they weren't. Quite honestly, they spread just like any other news story - I find this
NeoGAF post
pretty comprehensive).

What's yours stance on the "professionalism" of the email list? It's probably not as corrupt as people here think, but have you seen any morally grey things in it that hasn't already been leaked?

I'm gonna really disappoint you guys here and say... no, not really. I found it a valuable resource in terms of discussing the industry or talking about WWE. To be honest, I saw more discussion there of professionalism et al than I did anywhere else; the closest thing to morally grey that I can recall would be people going 'hey, this outlet hasn't paid me for my freelance work'.

It was an excellent professional resource, and a nice place to chat with people who face similar things that you do (for instance "I've just got my first death threat over a Madden review. How do I handle this?"). I'm sad it's gone.

How deep does this really go? Are we going to battle the Pope soon?

If you replay AC2, yes.

Console or PC?

PC most of the day, handheld or mobile when I'm lying in bed at night.

There being no collusion on GJP does not mean there was no collusion. Collusion happening does not automatically implicate GJP.

Ive said it before, but GJP existing is not problematic in itself, professional email groups exist in most fields. Only if we can show something problematic happening should we care. Focusing on it will make outsiders with experience working in fields where relationships are important laughing at us.

Here's how it stands: There were events of note in the games industry that week (ZQ's harassment, AS' video and harassment, the SOE bomb threat). Opinion writers obviously want to get their two cents in - just look at how many op-eds we got about Microsoft's anti-consumer practices after the Xbone's dunderheaded policies were revealed. One goes live, or in this case, two: Leigh's piece for Gamasutra and Dan Golding's tumblr post.

What happens next is a bunch of people getting in on the "me too" bandwagon. It's partly because you don't want things on your competitors' sites that aren't on yours, it's partly because there's probably an element of vanity that you want people to care about your opinion as much as they do about Leigh's or Dan Golding's, it's partly "everyone is talking about this so we should be too."

At worst, it's lazy and uncreative, certainly, but not necessarily dishonest. This is how it's always worked in the industry since I've been in it professionally (almost a decade).

Thats called blogspam. Somebody writes something, others either go "I AGREE" or, more often, "THIS GENERATES CLICKS!!" and copy it word for word. There is evidence of GJP involving collusion, but the gamers are dead articles arent part of that afaik.

Thanks for the answers. One last question regarding the "gamers are dead": I understand that articles "spread", but I don't why do many people would see it wise to emulate such an offensive piece, especially using a title as inflammatory as "dead".

There are much better ways to address the issue of gaming becoming mainstream, and I feel this was done in the worst way possible.

death of the "gamers" -casey johnson end of gamers - Dan Golding (tumblr, so honestly IDGAF) death of an identity - Luke Plukett

couple more I didn't list, although some of the titles are just focusing on the Sarkeesian side (which in some cases were an indirect attack). These aren't terms/phrases you throw around lightheartedly outside of a private context, especially to an audience that has been vilified by the media for so long (I certainly would not use this language with "otakus" or"weaboos" or whatever they call animegoers in their private circle. They are just getting out of that awkward phase of vilification too.).

That's the kind of stuff that lead people (at least GameFaq, from my browsing) to hate kotaku for years as a credible anything: broad brushstrokes and misrepresentation of games/gamers/culture does a lot to damage credibility (especially when they are very choosing of who/what to burn and who/what to praise).

It's possible. Leigh's article, certainly, had... inflammatory language I wouldn't have used were I the one writing it. This was at the end of a pretty awful time period though, since we'd had the harassment of ZQ, Anita's latest video and the harassment that followed, the SOE guy's bomb threat... people were angry, and I'm not sure I can fault Leigh for writing an editorial while mad.

The others, though? I really don't think they're quite as inflammatory as a lot of people believe. Certainly not as incendiary and emotionally charged as Leigh's.

The first one posted was
this one, literally a Tumblr post by Dan Golding. It doesn't say "gamers are dead," but it does say "the end of gamers" and I find it much less incendiary.

Vice's was also way too rabble-rousing for my tastes, now that I'm looking at them one by one. Chris Plante's Polygon piece was more saddened than anything else.

Really, Leigh's and Vice are the only ones that seem a bit "hey guys, wait, tone it back a bit" to me, to be honest.

Fair enough. I'll admit that the first ones I had the misfortune of reading were the two you found most incendiary. That may have blinded me when going through the other 7/8 articles.

It's a shame though, since an editor's job is to double check this and prevent this kind of stuff from getting through to the public (same Shit is happening to Lena in a completely separate issue for the same reasons, except in book form). I feel really bad PR and poor behavior on social media has enflammed this farther than it ever would have gone.

Anyway, thanks for the answers. Have to realize that the people in question are few in number. Good luck, bro.

Curious what you think about the information that OC has apparently obtained from a federal source that two of the death threats were false flags perpetrated by the people being "harassed" and who you think would be the most likely ones on either side.

It sounds pretty ludicrous to me. The idea that someone would happen to have high level fed contacts just because they're a govt employee sounds silly. And given that faking harassment would utterly destroy someone's reputation if they were exposed, it's way too much risk for too little reward.

If he comes forward with hard evidence, I'll of course change my mind, but as is it's hard to believe.

Yes, but the whole anti-Gamergate narrative is based around individuals receiving endless harassment. If it turns out they sent it to themselves and they've been blaming gamers/Gamergate this whole time...

But again, that doesn't seem rational to me. The risk of completely destroying your reputation, for what end? Making some gamers look like harassers? If I wanted to do that, I'd hop on Xbox Live and have a girl speak into the headset.

It's way too much risk for too little reward. Even if you believe that there's a secret conspiracy, that'd just make them stupid conspirators.

Dude, it makes no sense to me either, but I have no idea what goes through these people's minds. Or why the press is lapping it up the way it has been. Right now, the narrative of endless harassment is crumbling because people are seeing Gamergate grow and they're seeing how rational our arguments are.

I will gladly admit, there are a fair number of asshole gamers. I hate playing online for that very reason (I'm an NES/SNES kind of guy anyway, so online multiplayer isn't my thing anyway). And Twitch chats are always a source of head-shaking BS. But I'll never say these people represent gamers as a whole. It's like saying the craziest Tea Party members represents conservatives as a whole. Or the Yankees fans that go to games and beat up Red Sox fans represent all baseball fans.

For what it is worth I tend to agree with the sentiment. Seeing those articles was literally a game of telephone in action from a tumblr post to each site. Ripping off that tumblr post and posting it to each site was low hanging fruit to be honest. I can't blame them for being lazy. Worst case scenario I can envision is someone posting on the mailing list or tweeting the tumblr article in advance but that tumblr post was being passed around to all the people sympathetic to it's message by that point.

I do find some of the posts with Greg Kuchera and Greg Tito a bit damning though. Trying to squelch any dissenting information is kind of what started this ball rolling in the first place, those articles just poured gas on the fire, but your right they weren't all as bad as some of the others. (I hope I got the names right there BTW. I'm talking about the mails between the The Escapist and Polygon editors. I can't double check the names where I am right now.)

The Allister Pinsoff emails are bad too but I imagine that looking at it from the outside and perhaps not being versed in the particular law being broken that it might not look so bad at the time.

I've decided not to write about this because it's kind of ridiculous, but there's a thread created on The Escapist forums that is getting attention. I am unsure where to draw the line. As an editorial organization, I've made the call to ignore the story. But as the controller of a public forum on the internet, I'm struggling to find justification in shutting down discussion. There are voices all over the spectrum in there.

We will of course continue to moderate the crap out of the threads, make sure that all our stringent rules are kept.
Should I shut down the thread? Should I bury it? I will be writing a post to add to the thread now, but other than that I don't know.

Looking for opinions from the group because I'm stumped as to the best way to handle this.
Damn it, Jim, I'm a writer not a skilled forum moderator!

Greg, who was a relatively new EIC and to the best of my knowledge had never handled something like this before, was torn on what to do. As a forum operator, you're partially responsible for anything that happens on your forums. And he had this big thread that was, he feared, just causing a witchhunt against Zoe Quinn. Editorially, he wasn't going to cover it, but he wanted opinions and advice as to what to do on the thread.

Ben Kuchera was literally just offering his opinion. He was doing so in a way that was perhaps more aggressive than he should have been, but this sort of topic makes people passionate. But again, he was only responding to Greg's original call for advice. Greg asked for opinions, Ben felt strongly about it and provided his.

And in the end, Greg kept the thread up! I mean, if that doesn't prove that it wasn't a Big Secret Den of Collusion, I'm not sure what would. The fact that he asked for opinions, got some forceful ones telling him to close it, but kept it anyway...? GJP was not a binding governing body. You sought advice, you got it, and you did with that information whatever the hell you wanted.

It's generally the aggressiveness of Ben's replies when contrasted against what was happening at the time that get me. I don't believe in big shadowy organized cabals because those aren't very logical. But a few assholes next to megaphones forming a little clique and getting a little too chummy? Totally reasonable.

If anything good comes from this whole mess then maybe we can go a few years without these sites insulting their audience again. Assuming there is still an audience and it doesn't all move to youtube or twitch. (Personally I think not. Sometimes you want to read and not watch.)

NeoGAF has pretty much outed themselves as far as pro-Gamergate circles. The site needs to go die off in a gutter somewhere. What they fail to take into account is the simple fact that "games media is supposed to serve gamers." What we saw was an echo chamber of epic proportions and the appropriate backlash from their audience. Anyone who works with games and defends them, frankly, needs to be given a pink slip from the industry.

If a couple gaming sites had the balls to come out and call these articles out for the crap they are, I think it would have been more balanced. But you had pieces like Plunkett's which just spinelessly parroted what others wrote.

Plunkett was pretty much doing what Kotaku has done as long as Kotaku exists, which is "here are these articles, I'm giving you a summary and a few thoughts of my own, go read them." It's essentially getting some traffic from others' writing. Not a fan of that style of posting myself.

But he does explicitly say this:

Note they're not talking about everyone who plays games, or who self-identifies as a "gamer", as being the worst. It's being used in these cases as short-hand, a catch-all term for the type of reactionary holdouts that feel so threatened by gaming's widening horizons. If you call yourself a "gamer" and are a cool person, keep on being a cool person.

It's passive aggressive clickbait nonsense. Spineless article underneath a bullshit headline. Plunkett followed it up with the infamous anti-harassment post where he said he was going to moderate the hell out of the posts (this was after a lot of us were already fuming at the nature of the anti-gamer sentiments and the censorship). It wasn't Alexander levels of vitriol, but VERY poorly handled by the site whose ethics were under question due to the Quinn/Grayson thing.

Im very cautious about the whole gjp issue for the most part and dont find its very existence nor some of the leaks psrticularily damning, what i want to know is if my perception that the torching of pinsof happened in part through gjp, and if it did was there any backlash?

I worked with Alistair at the Escapist for a while. I think his heart is in the right place, but he screwed up and it was all in public. I remember thinking Jesus dude, you just keep digging your own grave.

I think "torching" is a misrepresentation. A guy came to ask for advice about an employee acting badly and opening his site up to legal liability, and people responded with said advice. Most told him to get legal counsel, some said to fire him, others said give him a second chance. Meanwhile, we were watching it all blow up on Twitter.

It has since come to my attention that Niero might have been lying when he first came with his problem - that he hadn't told Alistair to do (or not do) what he claimed. That's entirely possible. I don't know Dale and Niero; the only former Dtoid folks I know are Jim Sterling and Samit Sarkar. It's quite possible that Niero was lying and acting unethically.

But that reflects poorly on Niero and Dtoid, not GJP. If a professional colleague comes asking for advice, unless you have reason to suspect that they're lying, who would take them at anything but face value? It was a place to speak openly and frankly about problems we had, and what with Alistair's public actions at the time, it didn't look good for him.

I think that's somewhat fair response to it, BUT, when you see something like
this
be accepted there is something inherently wrong with the moderation of the group and something has to change. Discussing industry news and problems is one thing, effectively destroying your employees reputation and discussing his future employment is quite another and that is where a mailing list should revolt and demand that not be accepted.

Another question if you feel you can answer is weather or not that group was used to enforce narratives or coverage of events, either explicitly or implicitly, that is an allegation ive seen thrown around there that i havent seen substantiated enough to convince me.

I'd say that seems pretty fair. My impressions on Alistair does land pretty much entirely on Niero being at fault.

Blacklisting as well. A potential employer can seek out previous employers. But, a previous employer can not go out and make the first move. Again, thats on Niero. Although we can shame anyone that listened to him.

Its much easier to identify with Alistair when his boss was apparently so incompetent.

Well, let's not absolve Alistair entirely. He did act unprofessionally at best and unethically at worst. The SPJ code of ethics specifically says to do no harm in your reporting even if it's newsworthy, and outing a trans person against their will - specifically when they've already sort of shown they're not in a healthy mental state - is... not really great.

He didn't have to do it like he did. "Indiegogo funds used for dev's personal medical bills" for instance would have been a perfectly fine way to report on the fraud without outing her.

He stumbled, and stumbled seriously. What's more, he stumbled in public where all of his prospective future employers could see him.

ok. heres the thing. That is all is fine justification of the firing. Alistar himself understood and expressed it in his emails.

What is not fine, and clearly shows the problem, is Neiro contacting and discussing the matter in the private email list with potential employers and competitors. Neiro was relating the info on the matter purely from his point of view. in fact, what he expressed in GJP, outright differs from what was said in emails to Alistar. YOUR opinions on the matter, are entirely subverted by Neiros initial discussion. Neiros false representation destroyed Alistar's career options with anyone within the group. that is just unethical. not outright blacklisting yet. Of course later, he did take it a step further.

Now, commenting on the transgender outing. As someone with great personal interest in transgender rights and privileges, I am well aware of the dangers. He's not the first, and I've read many testimonials from both sides. I understand why he did it. Maybe "personal medical bills" would have been enough. I suspect people would have demanded more. Riddles demand answers. If investing someones background, or medical history comes into play, it has to come out honestly.

Again, I'm not defending Niero. If he came into GJP and misrepresented the situation behind Dtoid's walls, then that's a scummy thing to do. I don't, however, think it's inherently a bad idea for someone to go to his colleagues and say "I have no idea how to handle this, what's the ethical thing to do in this situation?" And again, by far the most common advice given was "seek legal counsel before you do anything."

If people demand more, then you just... don't give it to them. Like, the SPJ is pretty damn clear on this: You don't do someone harm for the sake of a news story.

If you are going to publish something that could lead to someone being harmed or even killed, you better have a
damn
good reason for it.

possibly on point two. but its the internet age. just not giving it to them, is not much help. possible worse. is Alistar disclosing that info better or worse then an internet mob doing it themselves, and having a feeding frenzy/witch hunt? Any cryptic reasoning, and especially refusing to disclose the specifics, would have incited a reaction like that.

We seem to have an example of that right here, with one of the individuals intent on injecting themselves into the spotlight. Or just Gamergate in general. when not satisfied consumers started doing the investigating. And they are not professionals. they are messy and have no ethical concerns beyond wanting answers.

The reason the screenshot is different from the leaked list is most likely because the "new" people discovered had left by the time the screenshot of the leaked list came out. So they WERE in the group, but WEREN'T in the group when the list of members got leaked. So she's not lying in the tweet, maybe being misleading though.

Interesting fact there is that another GJP member, Dean Takahashi, had done a similarly glowing pre-release review in GamesBeat. Usher probably made his little announcement after I sent him a little piece I did discussing the possibility that the Polygon and GamesBeat reviews were a product of a GJP multiplayer session.

what still puzzles me is how the hell has she not been put on disciplinary leave from her post? Like seriously what company manager would allow her to do this much PR damage unchecked? Oh right it's the corrupt ones